Unit information: Popular Music and Politics in Postwar Britain in 2012/13

Unit name	Popular Music and Politics in Postwar Britain
Unit code	MUSI30091
Credit points	20
Level of study	H/6
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Heldt
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of Music
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This course introduces students to the history of music in Britain since the Second World War, exploring how music has served to support political positions and communal identities. We will focus in particular on popular music, examining commercial popular music, light music and forms of music stemming from the various immigrant communities arriving in Britain in the past fifty years. How are we to understand the success of popular music? Does it reinforce the power of a malign capitalism, reinforce a stable democracy or function as an outlet for radical politics? What place does music have in our daily lives, and how does it help to order our existence? How do we understand the hermeneutics of popular music? From 1960s counter-cultures through punk and hip-hop, we will explore the relationships between music, text and musical culture while simultaneously locating music in its many political contexts.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module, students are expected to:

1. Have a good knowledge of the political history of Great Britain since the Second World War
2. Be familiar with the various forms of music (particularly popular music) that were available to the inhabitants of Great Britain in that period
3. Describe with confidence the techniques used to create popular music
4. Write critically and perceptively about questions of genre, style and meaning in popular music
5. Write critically and perceptively about music and its political meanings, using appropriate language and terminology.
6. (Specific to Level H) Display to a high level skills in evaluating, synthesising and (where relevant) challenging scholarly thinking on this topic, including evidence of a high level of bibliographical control.
7. (Specific to Level H) Engage with, and perhaps critique, the theoretical constructs that underpin different scholarly interpretations of music of this period.

Teaching Information

10x2 hour classes for the whole cohort of students at levels I and H.

Assessment Information

All the assessment is summative.

1x3,000-word essay (50%); 1x 2-hour exam (50%).

Both the essay and the exam will demonstrate (1) and (2), with the essay in particular providing an opportunity for the students to demonstrate (3) as well as (4).

Reading and References

• Bennett, Andy, Cultures of Popular Music (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2001)
• Hewison, Robert, Culture and Consensus, England, art and politics since 1940 (London: Methuen, 1995/1997),
• Longhurst, Brian, Popular Music and Society (Oxford: Polity Press, 2007)
• Macdonald, Ian, Revolution in the Head, the Beatles’ Records and the Sixties, Third Revised Edition (London: Vintage Books, 2008),
• Middleton, Richard, Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1990)
• Moore, Allan F., Analyzing Popular Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).